Simple Recipes for Real Science

Tag: kids’

For an explosive fountain of Halloween fun, try this carbonated chemical reaction!

You’ll need:

-a two liter bottle of Diet Coke

-a roll of Mentos mints

-a piece of paper.

-a disposable plastic table cloth or some construction paper

1. Make a Halloween costume for your Diet Coke bottle. We made pumpkins by cutting up a plastic tablecloth into sections and cutting a hole on the fold for the mouth of the bottle. Then, we draped the “costume” over the bottle and decorated it with permanent marker.

2.Remove the lid from the bottle and set the Diet Coke on a flat surface (outside!)

3. Roll some paper so it will fit into the mouth of the bottle, tape it into a tube, and fill it with a roll of Mentos mints.

4. Quickly dump the mints into the bottle and stand back! (Young kids should wear safety goggles or sunglasses to protect their eyes.)

The science behind the fun: Scientists are not sure exactly why the Mentos cause such an explosive reaction, but they think it has to do with the chemical reaction that occurs between the Diet Coke and the Mentos mints, when chemicals in the Mentos break the surface tension in the soda at the same time that carbon dioxide (CO2) bubbles form very rapidly on the surface of the mints, causing a huge, very fast release of carbon dioxide bubbles. The pressure of this gas builds very quickly in the bottle, shooting the liquid and bubbles into the air.

What could be more fun than creating your own green slime ? It’s easy to synthesize your own green goo using only Elmer’s glue (the non-washable kind), Borax (found in the laundry detergent section of Target and some grocery stores), green food coloring and water.

Mix together about 1/3 cup glue and 1/3 cup water with a spoon or Popsicle stick. These measurements don’t have to be exact. Add a few drops of green food coloring and stir.

To make the Borax solution, add around a cup of water to a jar. To the water, add about a Tablespoon of Borax. Shake or stir to dissolve as much of the Borax as possible. You’re making a saturated solution, so it may not all dissolve!

Here’s the fun part: Add a teaspoon at a time of the Borax solution to the glue/water mix. After each addition, stir the mixture. You’ll see long strings begin to form and stick together. Keep adding Borax until the mixture doesn’t feel sticky. It will form a shiny playdough-like substance. If you add too much Borax solution, it will feel wet, but you should be able to squish it around in your hands to absorb the extra water! The slime isn’t toxic, but Borax is soap, so don’t eat it!

What happens? Mixing Elmer’s glue with water forms a substance called a polymer, which is a long chain of molecules, sort of like a string of pearls. (A molecule is the smallest amount of a specific chemical substance that can exist alone, like H2O, a single water molecule). The polymer formed by water and glue is called polyvinyl acetate.

The Borax solution (sodium tetraborate) is a cross-linking substance that makes the polymer chains stick together. As more and more chains stick together, they can’t move around and the goo gets thicker and thicker. Eventually, all the chains are bound together and no more Borax solution can be incorporated.

You can store the slime in plastic bags. If you want to make a larger batch, just remember to mix equal amounts of glue and water and then add as much Borax solution as needed.

Last week, the kids and I saw a bright red bird with a blue head. Baffled, I pulled out my favorite bird identification app:Merlin Bird ID, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The app is free, available on the App Store and Google play, and much of the data in the app has been collected by citizen scientists, like you and me!

To use the app, you simply answer 5 simple questions about the bird you see and the app draws on a wealth of data to help you identify the bird. It comes up with a list of likely matches, and you choose the bird you’re looking at to learn more about it, and even listen to a recording of its song.

Normally, we can quickly identify the bird we’re stalking using the app, but the blue-headed red bird was tricky, so we went online to do more research. Merlin Bird ID suggested that it might be a cardinal, so we did a search for blue headed cardinals and discovered that we’d seen a bald-headed cardinal. It seems that some cardinals and blue jays molt all their head feathers at once, leaving their bluish skin exposed.

It’s been a busy summer, but we’re working on some sweet new experiments to share with you soon!

Last week, the kids and I got an advance copy of my new book “Kitchen Science Lab for Kids,” which will be available September 15th and we love how it turned out!

If you pre-order a copy from Amazon, Barnes&Noble, IndieBound, or Indigobefore August 15th, I’ll send you a personalized, signed bookplate for each copy you order. Just email your receipt number and the address where you’d like the bookplate(s) sent. My email address is kitchenpantryscientist@earthlink.net. (Be sure to include the name(s) you’d like the book signed for!)

At-home science provides an environment for freedom, creativity and invention that’s not always possible in a school setting. In your own kitchen, it’s simple, inexpensive, and fun to whip up a number of amazing science experiments using everyday ingredients. Science can be as easy as baking. Hands-On Family: Kitchen Science Lab for Kids offers 52 fun science activities for families to do together. The experiments can be used as individual projects, for parties, or as educational activities groups. Kitchen Science Lab for Kids will tempt families to cook up some physics, chemistry and biology in their own kitchens and back yards. Many of the experiments are safe enough for toddlers and exciting enough for older kids, so families can discover the joy of science together.

We collected some moss and lichens this weekend at the cabin, so we can look for amazing creatures called tardigrades hiding in the clumps. You may have heard about these extremophiles on Cosmos (they can survive heat, cold, drought, radiation and even space. Click here for some nice close-ups of what we’re looking for. I’ll let you know what we find!

While you wait for the sun to come out, put away the screens and pull out some simple science! Just click on the blue experiment name for instructions and more about the science behind the fun, or click here to watch me demonstrate them on Twin Cities Live.

Fizzy Balloons are a fun way to explore chemical reactions!
Have an engineering competition by making breath-propelled Straw Rockets and seeing whose will travel the farthest.
Make your ownOrchestraws from plastic drinking straws. (Get out the earplugs.)
Or watch science turn psychedelic when you add food coloring and dish soap to dairy and make Tie Dye Milk.